About Me

I work as a teacher, poet and spiritual director at a number of institutions in the DC area. My teaching focuses in various ways on writing, poetry, Spirituality and Christian vocation and ministry - especially from the point of view of the laity. I also offer classes and retreats encouraging people to explore their inner lives, engage their creativity and reflect on their beliefs about God, vocation, and how we can discern and pursue new ways to transform our broken world. I enjoy speaking of faith in the secular academy as well as reminding those preparing for ministry in the Church that our primary purpose is to love and serve the world beyond the church's doors. I love helping people to grow in faith and to find their own voices, and I also love encouraging them to use their minds. I see no contradiction between these impulses, believing as I do that faith, reason and creativity work together.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Sometimes it’s useful to move outside of my church-activities “bubble” and pay attention to ways that Christian faith -- my tradition -- is perceived, described, characterized “from the outside,” by people who are not Christians.

Because of an illness in the family , I was away from my usual treasured liturgical observance of Holy Week and Easter. Also through family connections, I found myself at worship on Thursday and on Sunday with the Unitarians -- at First Parish in Concord, Massachussetts, a vibrant and welcoming and faithful community. There was a lot to like there -- celebrations of community, a commitment to spiritual practice and a desire to “make a difference in the world.” I recognized in this worshipping community attitudes that are shared widely in our culture -- that really, you don’t need religion - that only leads to dissension and controversy (2 blocks away from First Parish is “Tri-Con” -- Trinity Congregational -- 2 identical white clapboard buildings, testimony to theological splits in New England in the 19th century). In fact it almost seemed petty of me, sometimes, to be clinging to more traditional, even “orthodox” Christian belief. The awareness of this disconnect has stayed with me ever since Easter, and I’m still mulling it over. Not sure what it means.

Among the Humanist members of First Parish UU, the observances of Maundy Thursday and Easter were offered mainly in a spirit of education and respect --solidarity, even, with Christians (some members there would call themselves Christians; most would not). There was a respectful agenda for worship: “here’s what Christians do at this time of year -- let’s experience some of what that is like, through our own worship, and see how that helps us to deepen spiritually in our own way, and even if we don’t share their [somewhat archaic] beliefs.” So on Thursday evening there was a “Mermorial” communion service, reminiscent of the Presbyterian worship I grew up with. Communion is celebrated once a year in this congregation, and it’s an important yearly event there. As the story of the Last Supper was retold, the emphasis was on Jesus gathering his friends. Almost anyone can relate to this part of the story. The congregation was invited to reflect on themselves as a community and to view this act of eating and drinking as a celebration of their life and history together in that place. So the meal on Maundy Thursday was a celebration of community, and a remembering of who we are and where we have been. Jesus’ example was a human example: this is something that people do. Little to disagree with there. But something left me restless.

Meanwhile, the choir sang (beautifully) a sampling of classic liturgical music belonging to the day, music that deeply touched me: Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus” and Bach’s “O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded.” The story I deeply wanted to connect with and retell that night was carried in the music. There was really nothing here to object to, from a human point of view: here was an assembly of good people, celebrating their common life and honoring some of the religious ideas of their neighbors -- including mine. It felt fussy and theologically petty for me to reflect too much on what was missing for me here. But there was a lot missing. It was the part about God sharing our humanity, and suffering with us, and calling us to a radical, mutual love for one another, grounded in divine love, expressed quite starkly in our liturgies of foot washing. That was missing. Not to mention the entry into darkness, expressed in the stripping of the altar. I was seeing the stories and practices reinterpreted, through the lens of an enlightenment humanism. Something was definitely missing. A dimension of mystery -- and even of darkness.

Between hospital visits, I did treat myself to an Easter Vigil service at Trinity Episcopal in Concord - and it was a wonderful, familiar service, with people of all ages on board with the movement through darkness, to the lighting of the new fire and the declaration “The Lord is Risen indeed.” (If anyone from that parish reads this - I thank you!) I needed a chance to say that out loud, in public, with fellow believers, at Easter. At the hospital and around town, I was really moving in circles where that was an irrelevant idea. So I was grateful that the church was there for me, a visitor from out of town. And it was a gift to realize how deeply I desired to be part of that celebration - how real it was to me. The church felt like an island of mercy and welcome in the midst of a world that was mostly oblivious to the good news of Easter. That image has remained with me and I’m still pondering what it means to me.

Meanwhile, back at First Parish Easter Day dawned, a wonderfully sunny, springtime celebration on a gorgeous New England spring day, and the church was packed. I was curious about what an Easter Sunday service of worship would be without the proclamation of Resurrection. But the service started promisingly, for me, with the Easter gospel rom Mark as the call to worship, and the singing, with trumpets, of Wesley’s “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” (though not the version that mentions the Cross). The theme of the service was Jesus, and the children’s sermon a re-enactment of a parable of Jesus. And the adult sermon did invite people to think about resurrection as a metaphor that could have meaning in their lives, using imagery from the Christian tradtion, and also some great poetry (read the sermon here. It's a good one). At one point, the preacher alluded to the previous week's observances, including "Friday called Good, and I cannot imagine why. . . ", unless for the irony of it all, just as when we say “good-bye” and there is nothing good about the leave-taking at all."

Right there: I thought. That is what I’ve been missing -- and it may be a good way of naming what we as Christians are called to wrestle with, reflect on, embrace, and maybe explain better to the world-- the paradox at the heart of our faith. “Talk to a Christian,” I wanted to say to the preacher, “talk to a Christian about that -- rather than describing us as if we were confused, or being ironic -- see what that Christian might say to you about why we call that Friday Good. Because that is the heart of the matter -- the way of life that leads through the messy reality of human life, suffering, evil and death, and triumphs ultimately and transformatively. It’s a supernatural claim we make -- there’s no getting around it. We do call this Friday Good. I’m still working on my “elevator speech” about that question. And I'd challenge any Christians reading this, what's yours? How would explain to someone, in less than 5 minutes, why we call this Friday "good?"

All this was 3 months ago -- now we’re in a different liturgical season and a different place in church life, as I note in my previous post. But I’ve been reflecting ever since about this weird sense of being a “topic” in a world that does not widely embrace or understand our Christian message and practices. Why do we call this Friday good? Why was it so important to me to be able to move through the darkness, in the company of fellow believers, to proclaim out loud “The Lord is Risen indeed.”? It is about all those good humanist goals. -- trying to be good people, deepen spiritually, make a difference in the world, Yes. But there is more at the heart of Christian faith. How can I own and name that, from where I stand in faith, and in language the world can understand? That’s the challenge I’ve been pondering lately. No clear answers. Just pondering.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Having been on an academic schedule my whole life, I find that when summer comes it has a liturgical feel. For academic professionals, summer is the time when we’re not teaching and meeting -- the time when we are free to do “our own work” of writing and creativity -- for many of us, the work that called us into academe to begin with. Sometimes it’s pressured, but ideally it’s at least in part “fallow time,” with space for contemplation. This year, with Pentecost so late, the feel of the summer season coincides quite well with the church year -- and I am sinking into it happily now, spending the early mornings on my patio, before the heat sets in, finding a little more “butt-in-the-chair” time for writing projects, getting in touch with the places in myself from which the best things come -- perhaps even with what Evelyn Underhill called “that deep place where the soul is at home with God.”

It has been a lush, green summer in Washington so far, and so I find the world around me, on my patio-mornings, in harmony with the green season at church -- the season after Pentecost which used to be called, quite appropriately I think -- “ordinary time” -- the longest season, and perhaps the most instructive, when we’re learning to live more deeply into the faith whose stories we’ve told from Advent through Pentecost.

Here’s a poem that came, one morning on the patio. It reflects how liturgically “right” this “green season” is for me this year. Hoping these words may help some of you also rejoice in the riches of this season.

Here on my patioThis July morningAfter drenching, cleansingStorms in the night,I rest amid birdsong,Surrounded in green

Green of the long growing seasonAfter-Pentecost at church

The season to put out leavesTake in Sunlight, nourishmentPut down deep rootsBear maturing fruit